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Friday, July 29, 2011

The Early Church and Contraception

I've written a paper addressing the claim that the early church was universally against contraception and that this fact should be troubling for Protestants who only began to accept the practice in the early twentieth century:

26 comments:

You do identify and seem to grant that the early church was largely against contraception.

Thus you conclude: "The church fathers, for all their wonderfulaccomplishments and brilliant insights, are not binding on the matter of contraception, allthe more so when their reasoning on this subject is exposed for what it is." I am glad this is agreed.

It seems to me that the oft repeated refrain that the church (any Christian church) did not condone contraception until Lambeth 1930 is worth repeating and it rings true. Now, you can say that does not matter and they were wrong etc - but there it is. There remains little question that the prevailing post 1930 Protestant sympathy with contraception is completely foreign to any age of Christian thought.

You continue to argue that NFP amounts to a sexual act frustrating procreation. And you continue to miss the distinction. Abstaining in marriage for periods of time is not a 'sexual act' that frustrates the natural purpose.

God designed it so that women are not fertile every day of the month. In other words, the intentional sterilization of the sexual act (contraception) is not the same as periodic planned abstinence where the sexual act is never sterilized.

I do thank you for investing your time in thinking about.

I will leave with a nugget of truth I've gleaned from experience: In my marriage my wife took 'the pill' for the first several years of our marriage. During that time she experienced a slew of negative side effects (weight control issues, temper issues, general hormonal issues etc). Once she got off and we changed the way we thought about sex - things improved dramatically. In short, once we stopped contraception our marriage improved greatly.

We also know many couples that after years of taking the pill have great difficulty conceiving. It is sad when a 30 year old woman cannot conceive because of 8-9 years straight of taking a pill which prevented pregnancy.

Since the procreation of children is the primary and principal end of marriage, it is never lawful to turn away from the required order. Nevertheless, it is not possible to effect it in some particular circumstances as in the case of barrenness or pregnancy which prevents begetting and generation. In such case sexual intercourse does not cease to be just and holy provided the laws of generation are followed. - St Frances de Sales

You do identify and seem to grant that the early church was largely against contraception.

Depends on what you mean by "largely." I noted that the early church fathers did not comment on the subject that much, but in those few places that some of them did, they condemned it.

It seems to me that the oft repeated refrain that the church (any Christian church) did not condone contraception until Lambeth 1930 is worth repeating and it rings true.

I spent a significant amount of time discussing this issue in my paper. Why is it "worth repeating" this fact? With respect to the issue as I framed it in the paper, what weight should we assign the fathers on this question?

You continue to argue that NFP amounts to a sexual act frustrating procreation.And you continue to miss the distinction. Abstaining in marriage for periods of time is not a 'sexual act' that frustrates the natural purpose.

You are confusing two separate issues. I allowed, for the sake of argument, for NFP not to be classified as a kind of "contraception." However we classify it, the early church fathers who spoke to contraception would also be against NFP as unnatural. For the church fathers (those few who spoke to contraception), the only legitimate purpose of the sexual act is procreation. NFP would have been seen as a gross perversion of the natural function of sexuality.

Put somewhat crudely, no one follows the church fathers on this issue. If the consensus is problematic for Protestantism, it is also problematic for Catholicism. NFP would also have been condemned.

I appreciate the time you took to read the paper, but you seem to have missed one its most critical points.

I won't dispute your and your wife's experience with birth control pills. In fact, I'd agree that wisdom precludes the use of this as well as some other form of contraception. But if one is considering the effects on the marriage relationship in evaluating the issue, it seems to me that one must consider the fact that NFP puts many wives into the position of not being able to enjoy sex with her husband during the only time of the month when she most desires and enjoys it. Rather, it's reserved for the time when she's most indifferent or even averse to physical intimacy. And calling this method "natural" seems to me to be the ultimate irony.

It is not established that the fathers would be against NFP. I cited one father, Frances De Sales, who acknowledged that sexual union during infertile periods is still holy and right so long as the 'laws of generation' are followed. St. Thomas Aquinas references such periods as allowable as well - I'll try to dig up the citation.

I believe the general consensus is that the ins and outs of the monthly menstruation cycle were unknown to the fathers, hence, they did not write about it in any context. Neither was their even a question about it.

Ree - If NFP is used to never have kids and only have sex when the woman is not fertile than I would agree with you. In fact, the Catholic church's balanced teaching is that even NFP can be sinful if used with the wrong motives. Having said that, many couples use NFP in ORDER to know when try to conceive! It is not a one way program, in other words.

Another great thing about NFP is that involves both the husband and wife in the family planning process. Both make the prayerful decisions and the sacrifice (for a time) to abstain rather than the wife taking on the soul responsibility to pop a pill and soul burden of the side effects.

It is not established that the fathers would be against NFP. I cited one father, Frances De Sales, who acknowledged that sexual union during infertile periods is still holy and right so long as the 'laws of generation' are followed. St. Thomas Aquinas references such periods as allowable as well - I'll try to dig up the citation.

The paper is about the early church. Perhaps there has been some miscommunication, but it seems to me you are citing men who lived centuries after the time period in question. If you're looking for someone in the early church, the only possible outlier of which I'm aware is Lactantius. But as I observed in the paper, he is inconsistent, at best, and so he would serve as a lousy candidate.

I believe the general consensus is that the ins and outs of the monthly menstruation cycle were unknown to the fathers, hence, they did not write about it in any context. Neither was their even a question about it.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. As I outlined in my paper, the early church's ignorance of reproductive biology had little, if anything, to do with their rejection of any sexual intercourse that did not have as its sole end procreation. Your reply does not take into account the Stoic framework out of which the early fathers operated. Even if they had a thorough understanding of menstruation, I doubt it would have changed their opinions. NFP allows sexual intercourse to occur with the intent not to conceive. Whether this is "open to life" or not would, of course, be irrelevant to the early church fathers. They desired that the act be completed for procreation only. In fact, a knowledge of reproductive biology would probably have led them to limit sexual activity only to those times when conception was most likely.

Of course, presumably a couple practicing NFP would not always be avoiding conception. But even if they plan ten kids with NFP, for a fertile couple, that still leaves them with about half of the childbearing years trying to avoid pregnancy. And it's not as if most of the pregnancy is a time of great desire for the woman either.

I will leave with a nugget of truth I've gleaned from experience: In my marriage my wife took 'the pill' for the first several years of our marriage. During that time she experienced a slew of negative side effects (weight control issues, temper issues, general hormonal issues etc). Once she got off and we changed the way we thought about sex - things improved dramatically. In short, once we stopped contraception our marriage improved greatly.

I'm not here to defend the pill.

However since you seem to correlate the pill with adverse effects in your wife, I thought I might say a word or two about this. First, much depends on your wife's body and health. Some women do have these sorts of adverse effects, while other women are fine. For example, if someone has diabetes or high blood pressure (hypertension), if they take the pill (and perhaps despite a doctor's recommendation against it), then the pill could cause adverse effects.

Also, if your wife was taking other medication at the time, the pill could have adverse interactions with these other drugs.

And the pill has changed over the years. I don't know how long ago your wife was taking the pill, but in the past the pill used to contain a higher dose of estrogen and progestin (the two hormones which mainly constitute the pill).

Again, I'm not defending the pill. I'm certainly not recommending Christians take the pill. The pill can have adverse effects. And it could be the pill is the sole or main cause of the adverse effects your wife experienced. That said, it could also be more complicated than the pill alone; your wife's adverse effects might not necessarily be due entirely to the pill. Plus, even if it is true for your wife, it might not necessarily be true for other women.

We also know many couples that after years of taking the pill have great difficulty conceiving. It is sad when a 30 year old woman cannot conceive because of 8-9 years straight of taking a pill which prevented pregnancy.

Well, while this could also be true, we'd likewise need to ask more questions and dig a little deeper before coming to the conclusion implicit in your statement that the pill causes a higher risk of infertility. For example, we'd need to ask if this 30 y/o woman has a history of any health problems? What sort of health problems? Also, how long was this 30 y/o woman off the pill before she began trying to get pregnant since there is lag time for the pill's effects to "wear off" (if that's the way to put it)? And what about her partner's health? Besides, at the risk of stating the obvious, a 30 y/o woman is going to have more difficulty conceiving than a younger woman even if she's never been on the pill. We could ask other questions too. I'm not doubting your story, and I'm not doubting the possibility that the pill could cause a higher risk of infertility in some or many cases. Rather I simply wanted to point out at the same time it could be more complex than what you seem to make it out to be.

Given Warren's broad definition of "fathers", why couldn't Protestants refer to those who initially accepted birth control in the twentieth century as fathers? If it's to be argued that they're too recent, then how does Warren distinguish between them and other figures of the second millennium to whom he's appealed? If the argument is that the lineage of fathers must go back to Biblical times, then I would repeat what I said in an earlier thread on contraception. On some issues (e.g., the sinlessness of Mary), the Catholic position can't be traced back that far. In fact, the Biblical and early patristic evidence against the sinlessness of Mary (and Purgatory, prayer to the dead, etc.) is significantly better than the Biblical and early patristic evidence against contraception. The Catholic tendency to underestimate early consensuses, while overestimating later ones, doesn't make sense.

Did Warren read all of Matthew's article? It seems that he either didn't read all of it or ignored much of it while writing his responses. The article makes a lot of good points that Warren doesn't even address, points that significantly undermine his arguments.

^ This is not established. Some of the father's emphasized the procreative nature of sex but I am not aware of any father that said that sex cannot be pleasurable or used to unite husband and wife.

Somebody said before that if this were the case than the fathers would have hated song of songs. While early on the procreative element to sex was emphasized, as time went by, the unitive element received greater emphasis.

The Catholic Church, following the fathers, teaches that procreation is essential to the marriage and the marriage act.

Jason - so I take it Frances de Sales is not a father? What year is the cut off for you?

In fact, the Biblical and early patristic evidence against the sinlessness of Mary (and Purgatory, prayer to the dead, etc.) is significantly better than the Biblical and early patristic evidence against contraception.

This is rather silly.

Which fathers (using your definition) said that Mary sinned or purgation did not exist or that saints should not be prayed to.

Did Warren read all of Matthew's article?

I did. It is quite long so I am only focusing on points where I think agreement can more easily be traced.

The title of Matthew's article mentions "the early church". The first sentence after the title mentions "ancient times". The sentence after that one mentions the influence of "the Stoics", which is more relevant to earlier centuries. In his introduction, Matthew refers to "Christians before the Reformation", which would exclude Francis de Sales, and the remainder of the article makes it clear that his focus is on the earlier pre-Reformation sources. Matthew goes on to address figures like Clement of Alexandria and Augustine, but not individuals who lived in the second millennium. In note 4, he quotes John Noonan's reference to "the first four centuries". He wouldn't need to limit himself to Noonan's framework, but Noonan's comments indicate that Matthew doesn't have individuals as late as the seventeenth century in mind. Matthew writes:

"This paper, however, limits the area of inquiry to the early church fathers, rather than the entire Christian tradition. I take this to be appropriate since what the fathers believed on contraception seems to have been carried down throughout the ages."

If he had been defining the fathers as broadly as you have, what would "the ages" be referring to? The period since Francis de Sales?

There are so many other indicators, within the article and in the larger context he's addressing, that Matthew was discussing an earlier timeframe.

Terms like "the fathers" and "the church fathers" are applied to figures of the first millennium far more often than they're applied to later individuals, like Francis de Sales. You're using a definition of that terminology that's less common, and Matthew has already told you that he didn't have that definition in mind.

"This is rather silly. Which fathers (using your definition) said that Mary sinned or purgation did not exist or that saints should not be prayed to."

Why are you ignoring what I wrote in response to you in an earlier thread? See my 12:03 P.M. post on July 16, which was written in response to you, in the thread here. You ignored what I wrote in that thread, and you're ignoring it again here.

"Thank you for explaining that citing Catholic theology past the first millennia is against the rules in this discussion."

Whether it's "against the rules" depends on the context. I've explained the inappropriateness of your citation of figures like Francis de Sales in particular contexts, and you haven't addressed what I said. Whether citing those people in other contexts would be appropriate is irrelevant to what I was discussing.

Matthew wrote, “By contraception I mean those non-abortive measures used to prevent the joining of sperm and egg. I take this to logically include NFP, but, for the sake of argument, another distinction can be admitted between physical devices (condoms, pills, etc.) and physical practices (e.g., abstaining during times of fertility).”

Another distinction between the two is that contraception artificially causes infertility while NFP makes use of naturally occurring infertility.

Matthew quotes from Noonan, “ ‘These authors had sought a purpose for sexual activity, and they had found it in the biological function. The suspicion they felt toward affection and dependence excluded the expression of love as a purpose. The supreme norm for them was not love, but nature.

“ ‘If one asks, then, where the Christian Fathers derived their notions on marital intercourse—notions which have no express biblical basis—the answer must be, chiefly from the Stoics. […]It is not a matter of men expressing simple truths which common sense might suggest to anyone with open eyes. It is a matter of a doctrine consciously appropriated. The descent is literary, the dependence substantial…

“ ‘The greatest reliance in argument, then, had to be placed on the law of nature, theconcept sanctioned by Paul in Romans 2:15, developed by the Stoics, invoked byPhilo....Nature became the ground on which the orthodox stood, the measure bywhich they measured.’

“Noonan concludes that, for Augustine, ‘Offspring are assigned an absolute value. The Stoic rule is accepted without acknowledgment of its derivation. Only sexual intercourse ‘for the sake of procreating’ is fully lawful.’ ”

Hi Matthew!

If you have this book from Noonan, would you mind providing his selections from Augustine that he used to draw this conclusion? The way the information is being presented here, it makes it appear as if Augustine drew his understanding of sexuality from Stoicism rather than from the Bible. I’ve found the opposite to be true. Noonan is a philosopher, so he sees this doctrine from a philosophical perspective. But Augustine’s faith was formed by the Scriptures as they were interpreted by the Church. I think the reason why Augustine doesn’t acknowledge the stoical derivation of his understanding is because his understanding was simply not derived from the Stoics, but from the Bible. I think that if you had the opportunity to ask Augustine, he would say that any agreement that can be found between the Scriptural truths that he propounded and the conclusions of the Stoics is simply coincidental.

I don't own the title, since it is both expensive and rare, so I will have to head back over to the library to find the relevant material. I don't mind doing that for you, since it would also be edifying to others, but it might take a few days.

You said:

I think that if you had the opportunity to ask Augustine, he would say that any agreement that can be found between the Scriptural truths that he propounded and the conclusions of the Stoics is simply coincidental.

Whatever Augustine might self-report about his derivation will not necessarily reflect the actual source(s) of his beliefs. Many people incorrectly claim, out of ignorance or otherwise, to have beliefs grounded in Scripture. The appropriation of worldly philosophical categories, which are subsequently baptized as "Christian" doctrine, is a problem that besets every age of the Church, and the era of Augustine is no exception.

I'd add that if, for the sake of argument, Augustine received his teaching from the Magisterium (which is what I assume you mean by "Church"), and you concede his position matched the Stoic position, then you would have to accept the conclusion that the Magisterium has changed its position on a matter of morals. Once it taught that procreation was the only appropriate end of sexual activity. Today it rejects such a narrow scope and now also allows it a unitive function. This seems to have negative implications for your denomination's alleged institutional infallibility.

Matthew wrote, “I'd add that if, for the sake of argument, Augustine received his teaching from the Magisterium (which is what I assume you mean by "Church"), and you concede his position matched the Stoic position, then you would have to accept the conclusion that the Magisterium has changed its position on a matter of morals. Once it taught that procreation was the only appropriate end of sexual activity. Today it rejects such a narrow scope and now also allows it a unitive function. This seems to have negative implications for your denomination's alleged institutional infallibility.”

I haven’t studied Stoic philosophy, so I’m not sure how Augustine maps onto their view. I don’t know if it was settled by the Church of Augustine’s day that procreation was the only purpose of sex. Augustine himself recognized that sex within marriage served as a guard against grave sexual immorality as well. And John Chrysostom said that “if you desire to look and find pleasure, look at your own wife, and love her continually; no law forbids that” (Homily 17 on Matthew). What was unanimous in all of this was that procreation was essential.

As you noted, the Church has since highlighted the “unitive love” aspect in addition to the procreative as another inherent good of sex itself. Augustine saw such “unitive love” as a good of marriage in general, but didn’t see it as extending to the sex act itself. The Church has since discerned more fully that the Scriptures do extend this unitive love to the sex act itself, and they used Augustine’s otherwise sound reasoning to incorporate this new emphasis into a now most wholesome design following this general paradigm: you should only engage in sex for a purpose inherent to sex, and you can’t engage in sex that purposefully contradicts a purpose inherent to sex. If we consider it in these terms, the teaching of the Fathers and the current teaching of the Church are in perfect harmony, even though the teaching has at the same time been authentically developed within this framework. And I think Augustine himself would appreciate this development.

Matthew wrote, “I don't own the title, since it is both expensive and rare, so I will have to head back over to the library to find the relevant material. I don't mind doing that for you, since it would also be edifying to others, but it might take a few days.”

Thanks for offering to do this. Please don’t feel obliged in any way though. We can probably discuss without them. Did you read this whole book, or just find relevant sections that seemed pertinent? I see on Amazon that it’s one fat book! And expensive, like you said. Wow.

I read most of the first couple hundred pages, since that includes discussions on the early church. There were a few relevant passages later in the work as well. Noonan writes well, and the reading goes quickly--at least as far as scholarship is concerned.

Hi Matthew. I really enjoyed and appreciate your paper. Although you commented on this, could you clarify for me exactly how the *biological* views of the early fathers impacted their condemnation. For example, at the beginning of your paper you mention that the ancients viewed sperm as miniature people, but later you assert that none of them believed that that sperm was a live person. --and how did their view impact their condemnation of contraception as a kind of murder? Thanks! Scott